Just over ten years ago, I was in the Kuwaiti desert waiting for George W. Bush to ‘make his decision’.

You may remember the circumstances. Ever since labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the ‘Axis of Evil’ in January 2002, the President had been gradually advocating war with Iraq based on the threat of nuclear weapons.

We knew it was going to happen. At the time, I was a rising intelligence officer, my head still filled with ideals of national duty from my time at West Point.

One of the generals that I served under gathered together his officers in early 2002 and said, “We’re going to war. It’s not a question of IF, but WHEN.”

By late summer of that year, my unit was ordered to Kuwait to pre-position assets and begin gathering boots on the ground intelligence. So every time Mr. Bush would say “I haven’t made a decision yet,” I winced from the heavy stench of his BS.

But still, I held out hope.

It all came crashing down ten years ago today. On February 5, 2003 Colin Powell, four-star general turned US Secretary of State, made a case to the United Nations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Now, I won’t bother delving into the inaccuracies of the intelligence he presented. In Powell’s own words, making that presentation to the UN was “the lowest point in [his] life” and a “lasting blot on his record.”

For me, it was pivotal. At that instant, I knew without doubt that my government had reprehensibly lied through its teeth. And if they were lying about this… what else were they lying about?

Everything, it turned out.

The event set me down a path on which I never looked back. The fraud of the Iraq War soon led to the frauds of previous wars, our monetary system, taxes, the global banking system, the national balance sheet, the police state, etc.

It all unraveled so quickly, and I soon realized that I was not living in a free country… that all the loud, bombastic nonsense and pledges of allegiance were illusions masking modern day serfdom.

The subsequent ten years have only reinforced this trend. The political and banking elite have given us more war, inflation, and epic financial crises. They’ve turned Western civilization into a giant police state. And they’ve managed to brainwash the great masses so effectively that the people are crying out for more.

It has $385 million worth of new dormitories (i.e., prisons?) tucked away on military bases called “National Emergency Centers” (thanks, Halliburton construction subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root).

And it has invested 120,000 on-duty officers from 73 law enforcement agencies with authority to arrest “suspects.”

If you think “it can’t happen here,” as described in the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel of that name, think again.

What’s to stop USG from doing Stateside what it has been doing around the world? After all, who has already begun killing American citizens with illegal drone strikes if not our totalitarian trendsetter President Barack Obama?

As Bill Blum, a Washington investigative journalist writes in his “Anti-Empire Report,” since the end of World War 2, the U.S. has interfered in the elections of at least 30 countries and dropped bombs on people in as many others and attempted to overthrow more than 50, mostly democratic, governments, such as Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973.

Romero added, Obama’s actions “raises serious questions about the administration’s commitment to the rule of law.” That’s a polite way of saying the president is a law-breaker. (In Chicago, the term to describe such people is ‘gangster.’) And extrajudicial killings are official Obama policy. As Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair claimed in Congressional testimony, the U.S. can, with executive approval, kill U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.

“It is alarming to hear that the Obama administration is asserting that the president can authorize the assassination of Americans abroad, even if they are far from any battlefield and may have never taken up arms against the U.S., but have only been deemed to constitute and unspecified ‘threat,’” points out Ben Wizner, staff lawyer for the ACLU National Security Project.

The key phrase here is “unspecified ‘threat’”, another way of saying “suspected.” As George Mickum, a lawyer who has represented Guantanamo Bay prisoners, told Inter Press Service (IPS), “We have killed thousands of innocent civilians while attempting to target alleged operatives. And let us not forget how frequently our intelligence has been wrong about alleged operatives. As the civilians were not engaged in hostile actions, their murders by the Obama regime become ‘war crimes.’” (Dear George, “we” have not done anything!)

And constitutional scholar Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Champaign, told IPS, “This extrajudicial execution of human beings constitutes murder, war crimes, and because the drone strikes are widespread and systemic, crimes against humanity. Because Obama’s drone strikes almost exclusively target Muslims and People of Color, they verge upon genocide.”

Boyle said, further, “The U.S. government has now established a ‘death list’ for U.S. citizens abroad akin to those established by Latin American dictatorships during their so-called dirty wars.”

If you think the USG will not condemn more Americans to death without trials, ponder the words of attorney John Whitehead, head of the Rutherford Institute of Charlottesville, Va.: “Unfortunately, ‘we the people’ have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch, so compliant and so indoctrinated on the idea that our government will always do the right thing by us that we have ignored the warning signs all around us, or at least failed to recognize them as potential red flags.” Whitehead is the author of “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State.”

Q: Why do the Postal Service, Department of Education, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buy up weapons and ammunition in bulk?

Q: Why does the Department of Agriculture need 320,000 rounds of hollow point bullets and .40 caliber submachine guns?

Whitehead points to a New York Times article quoting a Pentagon source who says that under Obama police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

However, when viewed collectively, they leave one wondering what exactly the U.S. government is preparing for and whether American citizens shouldn’t be preparing, as well, for that eventuality when our so-called ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ is no longer answerable to ‘we the people.’”

(Bloomberg News) The care provided Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan may have cost as much as half a million dollars.

Duncan died today at the hospital, where he had been isolated since Sept. 28. He had been on a ventilator, was given an experimental medicine and began receiving dialysis when his kidney’s failed Oct. 4, the hospital has said. His treatment included fluids replacement, blood transfusions and drugs to maintain blood pressure. There’s also the cost of security, disposing of Ebola-contaminated trash and equipment to protect caregivers.

A man in a uniform dashes up to you with a badge pinned to his chest and says that man over there is a thief! Quick, help me get him! What do you do?

You would probably run and tackle the guy down, right?

To get to the rational part of your brain that tells you to hold on, since you dont even know if the man in a uniform is actually a cop, or if the alleged thief actually did anything wrong, you have to first overcome a whole life of indoctrination telling you that when someone in a uniform tells you to do something, you do it.

Some are able to reach that rational part of their brains, but most are not.

Experiment after experiment has shown us the level of blind obedience that people have to anyone in a uniformreplacing any morality or common sense they might have had in order to comply.

Here in this video you can see some of the terrifying and silly things people do when instructed to do so by someone in a uniform. Mind you this isnt even necessarily a person of authority, its merely someone dressed as one.

Thats whats scary. Because people will willingly hurt other people for no other reason than the fact that someone appears to be an authority figure.

This kind of obedience is no accident. It starts off as an intentional process from childhood.
In school you were taught to sit down, shut up, and do whatever your teacher said.
The lesson from day number one was to take orders without thinking about them.

If you grew up in the United States, you likely started your day off with your hand over your heart proclaiming your fealty to your nationwhatever that wasand the piece of tri-colored cloth by which it was represented.
Before you could understand what any of the words in the Pledge of Allegiance meant, you knew them by heart.
That was exactly the point.

Which is why on October 12, 1892 the Pledge of Allegiance was made compulsory for all students in public schools.
Aiming to instill patriotism and obedience in children early on, Francis Bellamy, the socialist minister who penned the Pledge, made sure to keep it brief and with good cadence so it would be easily memorized.
Children across the nation recite it every morning:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Even into adulthood, once you could begin to understand the meaning of the words you were saying, there was to be no room for debate.

Liberty and justice for all? Who could possibly claim to object to that? Which is exactly what Bellamy wanted.
But in reality, how many people even as adults actually think about what those words mean.

The original Pledge was accompanied by the Bellamy salute, which was dropped during WWII because the Nazis started using it (they copied the United States tactics to instill national pride and obedience).

The Nazi salute and the indoctrination of children?salute.gif118.69KB0 downloadsYes, that was the US idea first.

Thus, the same blind obedience given to those in uniforms is also given to actions commanded under the name of the American flag.

Just the same, this can lead some to forget all morality and common sense to willingly harm other human beings, whether they be across the planet or within the country itself.

With enough indoctrination, all it takes is a piece of cloth and a few words.

"Every decision this country has made is wrong. Everything's wrong. Everything is going wrong for the United States.

When was the last time you heard something good about the United States? You don't hear it. China just took over as the great economic power … this was unthinkable.

But when you think of what's going on with Ebola, where we allow people that can be very, very sick and affect our entire population to be able to come into this country, there's definitely something wrong."- Donald Trump

I walked in the door this morning to my apartment in Santiago, happy to be back in Chile after a week away.

(One of the things that I really love about this place is the weather. The weather forecast in the entire central region of Chile is typically just a string of yellow circles. Yet it's not so hot that you need air conditioning. I love it.)

But my mood was quickly spoiled when my maid handed me an envelope.

"It looks official," she said, staring at me to gauge my reaction. She was right. The sender was the United States Department of Treasury.

Clearly my first thought was wondering why the US government was sending me anything, especially to my apartment in Santiago. My second thought was utter astonishment that the US Postal Service had managed to get it here!

I ripped it open and found... a check. Made out to me. It was my tax refund.

Then I glanced back at the envelope. It said, "Forgery or endorsements on Treasury checks is a Federal crime. Maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine and ten years in imprisonment."

Wow. In the Land of the Free, you can't even deposit a tax refund check without being threatened with fines and imprisonment. It's unreal.

We've talked about this before. Even the most basic, innocuous tasks now involve threats and intimidation.

If you apply for a passport on form DS-11, the government threatens you with "fine and/or imprisonment under U.S. law including the provisions of 18 U.S.C. 1001, 18 U.S. C. 1542, and/or 18 U.S.C. 162."

Applying for a social security replacement card threatens you with "penalty of perjury".

Applying for a driver's license in my home state of Texas threatens me with "five years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine."

And of course, the instruction book for IRS form 1040 includes an entire section threatening anyone about to file his/her taxes with civil, criminal, and administrative penalties.

There's very little you can do in the Land of the Free that doesn't involve the threat of fines and imprisonment anymore, including simply depositing a check.

They've criminalized almost every aspect of existence.EVERYTHING—how your children are educated, the purchasing power of your savings, the privacy of your email, what you can/cannot put in your body-- is regulated by the state.

Any deviation from the standards that they establish is criminalized. And they shove these threats in our faces at every opportunity.

The idea of a government for the people, by the people, of the people... has long been lost. They don't even pretend to serve the people anymore... it's just threats and intimidation.

More than a dozen (un)lucky rabbits were given Swedish massages four times a day, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, as part of a study to figure out whether massage can help recovery times after strenuous exercise — a practice Sen. Tom Coburn says makes a mockery of federal spending.

The rabbit massages are one of the hundred wasteful products Mr. Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, identified in his latest edition of the Wastebook, an annual compendium of the ridiculous and outrageous items in government spending, which he is releasing on Wednesday.

Other highlights included the National Science Foundation paying academics to teach monkeys to gamble, government sponsorship of a children’s play about brain-eating zombies and a first-person combat shooting video game the Army developed — but which intelligence officials fear terrorists could use to train their own recruits. Indeed, Hezbollah has adapted the game’s design to train suicide martyrs.

Mr. Coburn’s investigators also found scientists putting mountain lions, monkeys, rats and cows on treadmills. That’s reminiscent of a previous famous item Mr. Coburn spotted that involved sticking shrimp on a treadmill to try to see if tired shrimp were less healthy.

“Only someone withtoo much of someone else’s money and not enough accountability for how it was being spent could come up [with] some of the zany projects the government paid for this year,” Mr. Coburn said upon releasing the report.

In the case of the rabbits, they weren’t put on treadmills but were forced to exercise in order to create stress.

Some of the rabbits were then given immediate massages, some were given delayed massages, and the unlucky ones weren’t given any massages at all. Scientists then tried to figure out if the massages helped.

Taxpayers paid $387,000 for the two-year study, which concluded that other studies were right, and massage seemed to help in recovery — though it wasn’t clear that rabbit physiology could be extrapolated to humans. The rabbits were euthanized at the end of the study, Mr. Coburn’s report says.

A GOVERNMENTSTAFFED BY MOOCHERS AND BUMS

In another finding, Mr. Coburn said hundreds of employees who were suspended from their jobs for misconduct are still being paid by taxpayers — to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in salary.

More than 250 employees were put on leave for at least a year yet still collected $31 million in salary, according to data from the Government Accountability Office.

More than 4,000 other employees were put on leave for at least three months from 2011 to 2013, and 53,055 were put on leave for at least a month, the GAO said.

One unnamed employee at the Department of Homeland Security spent 730 days on paid administrative leave over the last three years. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, had the highest rate of employees taking excessive administrative leave, with nearly 2 percent taking more than the average.

The Department of Agriculture said it needed better guidance from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), but said it will also look at its own policies to see if changes are needed internally.

“Given the high cost to taxpayers, it is important that each federal agency increase its accountability and improve its stewardship of the use of paid administrative leave,” William P. Milton Jr., a human resources official at the department, wrote in an official reply to the study.

OPM said it would try to issue better guidance about who should be placed on paid administrative leave.

"Electronic surveillance added to the techniques of snooping which this sophisticated age has developed, we face the stark reality that the walls of privacy have broken down and all the tools of the police state are handed over to our bureaucracy on a constitutional platter… The dangers posed by wiretapping and electronic surveillance strike at the very heart of the democratic philosophy. A free society is based on the premise that there are large zones of privacy into which the Government may not intrude except in unusual circumstances…

We are in the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government. The aggressive breaches of privacy by the Government increase by geometric proportions. Wiretapping and “bugging” run rampant, without effective judicial or legislative control. Secret observation booths in government offices and closed television circuits in industry, extending even to rest rooms, are common. Offices, conference rooms, hotel rooms, and even bedrooms are “bugged” for the convenience of government.

The time has come when no one can be sure whether his words are being recorded for use at some future time; when everyone will fear that his most secret thoughts are no longer his own, but belong to the Government; when the most confidential and intimate conversations are always open to eager, prying ears. Privacy, and with it liberty, are be gone.

If a man’s privacy can be invaded at will, who can say he is free?

If his every word is taken down and evaluated, or if he is afraid every word may be, who can say he enjoys freedom of speech?

If his every association is known and recorded, if the conversations with his associates are purloined, who can say he enjoys freedom of association?

When such conditions obtain, our citizens will be afraid to utter any but the safest and most orthodox thoughts; afraid to associate with any but the most acceptable people. Freedom as the Constitution envisages it will have vanished.

The dossiers on all citizens mount in number and increase in size. Now they are being put on computers so that by pressing one button all the miserable, the sick, the suspect, the unpopular, the offbeat people of the Nation can be instantly identified. These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man’s life at will.

[W]iretapping and electronic “bugging” invariably … lay down a dragnet which indiscriminately sweeps in all conversations within its scope, without regard to the nature of the conversations, or the participants. A warrant authorizing such devices is no different from the general warrants the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit… Such practices can only have a damaging effect on our society."

A Michigan couple that has been raising chickens in their backyard as a source of healthy food for their family could get up to 90 days in jail for violating a local ban on backyard hens.

A Kentucky prison guard who was charged with 25 counts of sexual abuse against female inmates, trafficking controlled substances, and 50 counts of official misconduct walks away with no jail time and seven years’ probation.

A 53-year-old Virginia man is facing 20 years in jail for kidnapping, despite the fact that key evidence shows him to be innocent and his accuser a liar, yet the courts claim they’re unable to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent refusal to hear the case of Jones v. U.S.,judges can now punish individuals for crimes of which they may never have been convicted or even charged.

In recent years, for example, the Court has ruled that police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits; police officers can stop cars based only on “anonymous” tips; Secret Service agents are not accountable for their actions, as long as they’re done in the name of security; citizens only have a right to remain silent if they assert it; police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” justifying any and all police searches of vehicles stopped on the roadside; police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime; police can stop, search, question and profile citizens and non-citizens alike; police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the “offense”; police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home; and it’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name.

The US government’s debt is getting close to reaching another round number—$18 trillion. It currently stands at more than $17.9 trillion.

But what does that really mean? It’s such an abstract number that it’s hard to imagine it. Can you genuinely understand it beyond just being a ridiculously large number?

Just like humans find it really hard to comprehend the vastness of the universe. We know it’s huge, but what does that mean? It’s so many times greater than anything we know or have experienced.

German astronomer and mathematician Friedrich Bessel managed to successfully measure the distance from Earth to a star other than our sun in the 19th century. But he realized that his measurements meant nothing to people as they were. They were too abstract.

So he came up with the idea of a "light-year” to help people get a better understanding of just how far it really is. And rather than using a measurement of distance, he chose to use one of time.

The idea was that since we—or at least scientists—know what the speed of light is, by representing the distance in terms of how long it would take for light to travel that distance, we might be able to comprehend that distance.

Ultimately using a metric we are familiar with to understand one with which we aren’t.

Why don't we try to do the same with another thing in the universe that’s incomprehensibly large today—the debt of the US government?

Even more incredible than the debt owed right now is what’s owed down the line from all the promises politicians have been making decade after decade. These unfunded liabilities come to an astonishing $116.2 trillion.

And the years of slavery required are only growing.

Break your chains while you can and set yourself and your offspring free.

1. You scream "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" at the postman;
2. You've got a temperature of 103F with projectile vomiting;
3. Your neighbors broke into your house and stole your furniture;
4. The Internal Revenue Service has "Unfriended you" on Facebook and at your bank;
5. You watch television at least 6 hours every day;
6. You were arrested for animal neglect because your dog had fleas;
7. Your kid's school teacher was arrested for selling cocaine;
8. Your tenant subleased your rental house to a Mexican cartel;
9. The SWAT team invited itself to your birthday party which ended with flash grenades;
10. Your local supermarket requires your fingerprints in order to buy food.

No matter who wins or loses on Election Day, President Obama is ready with a big new push of his radical agenda the very next day. It includes a triple punch on immigration amnesty, higher health insurance costs and putting thousands of convicts back on the streets early.

Mr. Obama says his policies are on the ballot but there’s nothing democratic about his agenda.

All of these are executive actions that would require heroic efforts by Congress to reverse. Every candidate and incumbent should reveal how they’ll fight against Mr. Obama’s triple whammy that will hit America in the gut between Nov. 5th and the end of this year.

The only thing holding Mr. Obama back has been his desire to avoid backlash at the polls against his fellow Democrats. So he has used his typical tactics of deception and propaganda, plus friendly media, to suppress public awareness.

The first roundhouse swing: Unless we could quarantine the White House, Mr. Obama’s amnesty announcement will sucker punch millions of Americans who could lose jobs to millions of illegal immigrants. Immigration officials already are advertising to purchase up to 39 million plastic ID cards over the next five years. These are to be Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards, two-year work permits like those given by Mr. Obama to over 800,00 “Dreamers.” Also, Permanent Residency Cards (PRC, often called green cards). Typically, they are good for 10 years.

The solicitation says the base number needed is 4 million cards a year, plus possible “surges” of an extra 5 million ID cards in 2015, 5-million in 2016, 3 million in 2017, 2 million in 2018 and 3 million in 2019. Each is to have embedded RFID chips and holographic images.

Punch No. 2 is more scary news about Obamacare. Next year’s rates should have been revealed Oct. 1st, but that was purposefully delayed until Nov. 14th. Analysts project premiums on the low-cost plans will rise by 14 percent next year. These are high-deductible policies, criticized for requiring a $6,000 deductible to be paid before insurance kicks in. Investors Business Daily reports an expected 64 percent jump in Seattle, rising from $60 to $98 per month. Other examples: In Providence, R.I., the monthly change would be from $72 to $99 per month; Los Angeles from $88 to $111; New York City from $97 to $114.

This Obamacare wallop is a combination punch. Exemptions for “non-compliant” policies will expire, meaning that people who like their coverage cannot keep it. They’ll be knocked down into the Obama mess of high premiums, high deductibles and less choice of doctors. For example, Colorado suffered 22,000 policy cancellations last month alone, with 193,000 more expected in the next year.

Mr. Obama’s third strike at Americans’ jaws is a massive prison release.

Expect 20,000 inmates to receive executive clemency in addition to the 36,000 illegal immigrant convicts set free in 2013. Most will be minorities and that’s the heart of the matter. Mr. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have often complained that minorities are sentenced for too long, especially for drug offenses. The Justice Department announced this “New Clemency Initiative” in April, then invited criminal defense lawyers, public defenders and the ACLU to do the screening for who they think should be turned loose.

They claim that violent offenders will be weeded out. But this administration is notorious for announcing supposedly strict guidelines but failing to follow them.

There’s also a major risk because a high number may include those recruited in prison by radical Islamists. Those jihadists focus on black American prisoners who want revenge against supposed injustice. The risk is that another Alton Nolen may be among those put on our streets. Nolen, an Islamist convert, was let out of Oklahoma’s prisons early and now is accused of beheading a co-worker in his pursuit of jihad revenge.

Mr. Obama’s plans are in place for the one-two-three punch on amnesty, Obamacare and get-out-of-jail-early. The last remaining barrier protecting us from Obama-unchained is his need to protect fellow Democrats on Nov. 4th. That date is like a boxing bell, signaling Mr. Obama to unleash his barrage.

The majority of Americans who already are upset at Mr. Obama may think that his deception and radicalism can’t get any worse. Unfortunately, they can. Just wait until after Election Day. We need a huge and bold crop of new lawmakers to fight back against Mr. Obama’s triple punch to the gut of America.

Have you ever considered the legitimacy of property taxes? It’s one thing for the government to take a cut from your income, but there’s something deeply offensive about the idea of property taxes. It’s the idea that you have to pay your local government, year after year for the rest of your life, for something you’ve already paid in full. It’s complete nonsense.

It calls into question whether you even own your property in the first place. After all, do you really own it if you have to keep paying for it? It seems to closely resemble the medieval system of serfdom. The peasants didn’t own the land they worked on. They had to pay a yearly fee for the right to work that land, which went towards the nobles and knights. It was protection money. So at least they had the benefit of protection from the warrior class in those societies. Can you say the same of your local police?

I digress. In reality, you don’t “own” your house or the land it sits on, even if it’s been paid in full. That’s another benefit those peasants have on us. They didn’t have to pay some bank for decades, only to have their land taken from them when they didn’t pay their “yearly fee”. They were never under the illusion that the land belonged to them.

I doubt the people of Detroit have any illusions either. They’re facing an unimaginable crises that threatens to put tens of thousands of residents on the streets. The city government is about to show us once and for all, who really owns the land.

This year in Detroit, there have been 22,000 foreclosures on properties whose owners failed to pay property taxes three years in a row. Of those, 10,000 are estimated to be occupied, meaning this year’s foreclosures are set to oust about 27,000 Detroiters from their homes.

That’s a large number in a dwindling city with fewer than 700,000 residents, but the figures are set to get even worse. In the next couple of months, Wayne County’s treasurer will be serving foreclosure notices on 110,000 more properties, 85,000 of which are in Detroit, according to its chief deputy treasurer David Szymanski. With half of those Detroit properties estimated to be occupied, this means a further 115,000 Detroiters might lose their homes next year.

In a city supposedly trying to attract residents rather than lose them, this means a potential 142,000 Detroiters—one-fifth of the city’s population—will be shown the door within the next year and a half. The city has yet to announce plans for accommodating those who get evicted.

So they’re basically going to evict the bottom fifth of the city in one fell swoop. What kind of country do we live in, where a city can look their citizens in the eye and say “Sorry, you’re not good enough for us. You don’t make enough money to live in the poorest city in America. You’re not rich enough to grace the bottom of the barrel.” They’re really prepared to throw their citizens out on the coldest and meanest streets of America, while their fiscally and morally bankrupt government spends 450 million dollars on a brand new hockey stadium.

That is just wicked.

Somehow I don’t think this is going to end well for the city. I don’t think they’re going to be able oust 142,000 of their poorest and most desperate residents. These people don’t have anything left to lose, and there aren’t enough cops to evict them at gunpoint. If this comes to a head, then the residents of Detroit should prepare themselves for the next major American riot.

East Porterville Calif. (Reuters) - In one of the towns hardest hit by California's drought, the only way some residents can get water to flush the toilet is to drive to the fire station, hand-pump water into barrels and take it back home.

The trip has become a regular ritual for East Porterville residents Macario Beltran, 41, and his daughters, who on a recent evening pumped the water into containers in the bed of his old pickup truck to be used for bathing, dish washing and flushing.

As if to emphasize the arid conditions that led them there, an emergency broadcast warned of a brewing dust storm.

The state's three-year drought comes into sharp focus in Tulare County, the dairy and citrus heart of the state’s vast agricultural belt, where more than 500 wells have dried up.

Donna Johnson's tap went dry in June. Since then she's been trying to help neighbors connect with help from the county and the state. She began making door-to-door deliveries of water donated by charities and such supplies as hand sanitizer – often in withering 100-degree heat.